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Topic: [GAME] NPC casting (Read 28457 times)

Many GMs, my self one of them, find it helpful to "cast" their NPCs as particular actors/ musicians/ famous characters, usually as they appear in a specific role. This NPC is played by Harrison Ford, this other guy is a Johnny Depp knockoff, and so forth. Imagine the default dragon personality for the world is Sean Connery; another gives all of his "evil cult leader" NPCs the voice of James Earl Jones.

What I'd like to do is try it the other way 'round. Rather than casting actors as particular NPCs, think about the sort of NPC that would end up channeling that particular actor in your game. Then after you answer it, give the next actor.

Let's start with a relatively easy one: Jeff Goldblum. Who or what would Jeff Goldblum play in your game?

Mr. Goldblum would play a slick lawyer type. He would be in high fashion suit, surrounded by girls (attracted by wealth and power) and be too damm good at his job in the courtroom. He would tear PCs apart on the stand, get anyone off, and create contracts that the Devil would tear his hair out before signing.

In a fantasy setting, Christian Bale would play the ignoble noble. He is of the knightly class, but shirks fellow nobility and even shows disrespect for the king. He is as dashing, chivalric, and charming as any other, though. A skilled combatant, he maintains the respect of the nobles because of his ability to rally the lower class footsoldiers. It is rumored he has a love interest, but if he does, he keeps her a closely guarded secret.

Remaining in the realm of Fantasy, Rachel Weisz could play a gentle foreign sorceress, a thoughtful woman of power who left her homeland for the love of a noble captain of horse, but realized soon after her arrival in her new land that their relationship was not to be. Although she and her paramour are strongly drawn to one another, she soon realized that she isn’t willing to make the compromises that becoming the wife of a politically ambitious soldier would entail. Rejecting the constrained life of a noble’s wife, she is living alone, taking advantage of the scholarly opportunities the capitol allows her. A few other nobles have made tentative advances, but her heart remains with her captain.

In a sci-fi setting, Chow Yun Fat plays the captain of a small but highly skilled crew of space pirates. Living and working from a small blockade runner and a few one-man fighters, the crew is known throughout the quadrant for their ability to disable a ship in minutes and quickly take its bounty. Chow Yun Fat's character is known for his coldness, showing sympathy to none, yet quite consistently disabling a ship rather than outright murder its occupants. The crew consider him a father due to his generousity, but he is quick to kill any that betray or question him. On the rare occasions he speaks, his words are curt, wise, and few. None can rival his skill as a fighter: whether the weapon be phase pistol, force blade, or even bare hands, the captain always wins.

In a Pulp/Modern/Near Future/ and even Future game, Agent Steve, because there are just too many Agent Smiths, seems to be what players expect of government agents and liasons. He is nervous, officious, and bumbling, though well dressed. He seems more jittery than all the coffee he is drinking would imply. He thinks he is totally suave and debonair, but that is far from the case. Oh and any female PCs will completely discomboobulate his scattered mental process. You not only have to lead him to the clues, but you have to explain to him why they are important. He is always jumping to conclusions, personifying the maxim - to every complicated problem that is one simple, direct, easy to impliment solution that is totally wrong. He seems to be totally comedy relief. Yet, he is considered a "Top Agent" at the agency.

When the "violence" starts he will get totally flustered and nearly get himself hurt in the first exchange. Then he will get his act together and respond appropriately. ("Okay, Right. Remember your training.") Soon, he will be at ease and will be shooting and attacking hand to hand like his an action hero in a John Woo movie. (And make it seem so easy, he will seem to be a characture of an action hero.) Guns will be shot out of hands. He will kick people through walls. He will shoot wires so equipment falls from the ceiling. He will of course always seem to find an opportunity to shoot through the legs of a female to hit a bad guy on the other side. After the combat, he will be totally smooth and debonair... like James Bond played by a great actor. He will have a clue for this time, and show great insight to the clues discovered. This smoothness lasts only a short while (though the threat of more violence will keep him on edge, and thus smooth). Eventually he will turn back into a bumbling fool.

After this happens a time or two, it become apparent why they think he is a "top agent". If you can get him into the thick of things, he can resolve almost any situation.

Is “Oleander”, a deadly operative for a secretive organization. The actual source of their funding is as “Black” as the missions they tackle, but she is one of their top agents, as deadly as the flower that is her Nom de Guerre. Hardly a “frail flower of feminity”, Oleander has been given the same rigorous training that Special Operations forces are subjected to and passed with excellent evaluations. She is tough as nails and always achieves what she is sent to do.

While her supervisors consider her to be all business, she has a feminine side, a facet of her personality that she buries deeply. She figures that in a couple more years, her obligations to her employers will have been completed, and she can begin to live for herself again. In the meantime, her only noticeable feminine affectation is her hair, which she wears long. It may be difficult to maintain it that way, but in her mind, it’s a symbol of the day when she will be her own woman again.

In a sci-fi setting, Rufus Sewell is a influential representative in the Solar Parliament. The son of a famous general, he has followed a very different path from his mother, choosing one of the more pacifistic parties in the government. He represents a small moon colony where he is beloved by his people, consistently benefitting his constiuency. He is a master of decorum and empathy, knowing immidiately how to deal with almost any sensitive situation. Despite his political leanings, he is a skilled military tactician; before entering law school, he served in the Solar Navy and was awarded numerous commendations for his piloting skill. With popularity, military fame, and political skill, Sewell's character is quickly gaining ground in the Parliament is expected to announce his candidacy for Prime Minister in the next term. It is difficult to see how aggressive he will be in campaigning: with his charm and political grace, a canvassing or political attack can seem like a compliment. A cunning politico indeed.

Jodie Foster plays Manda Brightfall, scarred survivor of a terrible massacre. She and a handful of children managed to escape the attack that left her isolated village in ruins: Only through her determination and refusal to give up were they able to make it back to civilization.

Unfortunately, the authorities seem determined to sweep the incident under the rug. They haven't sent anyone to investigate the massacre, nor have they taken action to avenge the deaths.

Whoever made these decisions didn't anticipate Manda's quest to see justice done. She is determined to find someone that can bring the murderers to justice and discover whether some of the villagers were taken captive, rather than being slain. She doesn't know why the authorities haven't taken action, but whan she finds out, they'll be sorry they didn't.

You know, I wanted to do something different with him... but he is The Archetype. The first eight things that popped in my head were horror related. But perhaps this is somewhat horror related without being the Mad Dr. Perhaps just a little Mad.

Mr Douglas West is the aging and grandfatherly appearing CEO of Polycorp (once known as CGMF, the company it became after the take over of International Business Services by Western Hemisphere Manufacturing). You name a type of business, Polycorp has a unit involved in it. There are Polycorp divisions everywhere in the world. This global manufacturing and service concern is one of the largest companies in the world, though its income tends to make is just short of the international Fortune 500.

People have often thought that West's strategems for company growth were peculiar. However they have been effective. He is the head of the board of the directors, the major stock holder, as well as the CEO of the company. Anything Mr. West wants dones, gets done.

And that is good for Mr. West, as what he wants to do is someone exotic.

He wants to take over the world and run it in an appropriate manner: efficient and effectively.

Conventional processes would never work. If they did, someone would of done it by now. No, it would have to be something beyond the normal to make it happen. West has invested in a number of Fortean-esk research projects over the decades. He and a small group of supporters have utilized these odd projects to advance their agenda and make a great deal of money over the decades.

He has aquired a large number of alien artifacts and ancient artifacts of odd power. Many of these items have been duplicated for use, while others had copies made of them and those copies were left for others to find (or left them in their place in various places of storage or display). He has quite the collection of exotic books/ scrolls, many of which he has used to bribe people of "special skills" to utilize those skills for him.

He has harnessed the forces of magic and the occult to extend his own lifespan. While he seems a dabbler, his arcane strength is quite strong. He can also scry to see competition and future trends, though his daughter seems to have stronger talents in this direction. These talents have served him well in business, the stock market, and the commodities market.

He has uses Demons to remove unwanted people who blocked certain business deals or got too close to the truth. He has not yet make proper pacts like some of his board members. He likes to be the majority shareholder of everything, including his own soul.

The alien technology the company has utilized, augmented by the enchantments, had provided a number of useful tools. However the fine control needed to properly utilize them is missing, to date. But any day now, someone will crack those codes.

The biotechnology at his disposal is quite impressive. They may be the key that unlocks his conquest of the world. The suspended animation program that came from his biologic studies, combined with mind reading technology, may be the key to proper everlasting life. Add to that the Andro projects...

The most dangerous part of West's plans is Andro projects: the android and snythezoid manufacturing and replacement programs. West has been manufacturing these things for a decade now. There numbers are growing and their programming is becoming more and more "realistic". Using his service industry positions (temps), the androids are infiltrating key positions in government and industry. When critical mass has been achieved, they will take over their various organizations or immobilize them so they can not respond to his threats.

West is an old school gentleman. He is articulate, well educated, and has proper manners at all times. He will offer people he is interrogating tea and scones. Just because it is just rude not to be a proper host, even under less than ideal relationships. He will not stoop to torture, but the brain ripper does an excellent job as well. He is quite ethical in his own way, not willing to wipe out a huge portion of humanity or do untold damage to conquer the world. That is not to say he won't eliminate people to reach his ends. He just won't do it randomly. He is quite philothropic, and does so because it is right, not because it is a tax write off. He is a complex man who is easy enough just to write off as a madman.

Keep in mind, he may not control the world at this time, but that does not mean he can not manipulate it a great deal.

Dr. Douglas McDunnoughRead the letters on the frosted glass of the door. Most of the resident researchers and interns consider those letters to be as fearsome as Dante's declaration at the gates of Hell. Wearing a plain white coat and a pair of oval glasses Doug McDunnough is a scientist with the outward demeanor of an M1A1 main battle tank. As one of the leading scientists at Organic Endeavors, Inc. McDunnough is one of the most influential people in the company. As the head of the Human Cloning Project, many think his drive to create perfect clones is so that he isn't the only soulless person on the planet.

Behind the stone cold expression and serpent's eyes lie another man entirely. Douglas lost his wife of 20 years in a freak accident and his implaccable demand for perfection in the Human Cloning Project comes from a nearly bottomless desire to see his wife resurrected through the holy faith of Science. No one in the company save for his confidant Lt. Director Duncan St. George knows his secret. The Company, working with the government is actually funding Organic Endeavors, Inc. to create clone soldiers to fill out the ranks in the increasingly incapable volunteer army of the USA.

Unfortunately for McDunnough is that science cannot replicate a human soul and all of his attempts have created physical facsimilies but none that match the ideal has carries in his heart and soul. Each failure in the lab turns McDunnough a bit colder, a bit harder, and a bit more cynical.

Gerald Seversen, once a prominent player at court, was a thorn in king Bardik's side: not only was he well spoken and rallied a significant majority of the lesser nobles behind him anytime the sovereign wished to curtail the privileges of the nobility, he also enjoyed pushing the king's buttons just for the hell of it.When he was caught in bed with the king's dauhter Kianna... and her sister Belgemine, all hell broke loose. Gerald was exiled from court, and if not for the swiftness of his steed, the king's knights would have certainly given him a fair taste of the sword.

Hide he did amongst the lawless men of the Heirndar mountains, who soon learnt to heed his advice, or, later, wish and order. While he lost his fief, Gerald soon claimed the heights and valleys of the Heirns as his realm, and, after gold was discovered there, rejoiced at the influx of able men from the surrounding kingdoms, as well as the chance to play off the neighboring monarchs against each other with the promise of gleaming gold.

Gerald is a player, ever restless, and a great gambler, instinctively knowing what the odds stacked against him, or in his favor, are. Charismatic and gifted with just the right amount of roughness, he's an excellent leader for the haggard assembly of misfits in his lands.Many are his passions: horses, women, any challenge at all actually. And of course the Game.He might want to kidnap a princess, start a war (amongst others) or ruin the name of soe noble just for the amusement factor, to humiliate them, or to get ahead himself.

Alexis AronofskyAlexis is much like any other bored, overstimulated, wanna-be desperate housewife. She lives in an expensive apartment with two of her friends who spend most of their time immersed in a fantastically shallow world of strobing media, orgiastic consummerism, and a slavish devotion to the TV. They watch TV on their cell phones, in their showers, in their cars, their refridgerator even has a television in it (unfortunately I'm not making that one up).

But this high-glosses Sex and the City lifestyle is suddenly turned on it's head when the Television starts talking to Alexis. It starts innocently enough, snippets from the news channel, the weather man telling her to go outside and it keeps expanding. The entire event is surreal to Alexis an wacky hijinks ensue as she starts avoiding the television, which is now omnipresent in her home and job. Her friends and coworkers start wondering about her as in their eyes her behavior is becoming erratic, who has the 10 in moniter removed from their car?

As events progress, Alexis meets a great guy and falls in love, though he isn't Mr. Big (Sex and the City reference) he is a real person and she realizes that all of her demands and expectations have been dictated to her by the television. Freed from the shackles of television she goes on to live a more normal life, quiting her plastic job in the city and moving to a country home with her new husband, and a swelling belly. Meanwhile, her room-mates greet the new girl come to the city to fill the empty third bedroom and 1/3rd of the rent. Their eyes are glassy as they watch their HD TV, sip zinfandel and compare their designer high heels.

Don Juan Carlos is one of the most powerful men in Miami. His wife and youngest daughter live in his near palace on the east coasts along the ridges. He has come a long way from being a fisherman off the coast. He owns blocks of hotels along The South Beach, a small shipping concern, several fishing companies, and major part of the Miami Herald. He also gives low cost loans to struggling fishermen. His oldest daughter, Cecelia, is his "right hand man" helping him run his legitimate empire. His three sons, all Oxford educated, are running his coca fields in Guatamala and Columbia. He oversees the intake and distribution of product, through several intermediaries of course, through other companies and shipping concerns (his own are squeeky clean). His dirty money will make his family a legitimate power in the world. His children will own countries.

Boyar WitzkyThe Boyar, a regional noble of the Romanian region, rules a large but bitter parcel of Lord. Almost skeletally gaunt (insert computer graphics to remove nose and give more skull-like appearance to Mr. Bacon) he is a cruel and monsterous man. But this is no history channel spin-off, Witzky is more than a bloodthirsty noble, he is a vampire.

But he is not a sexy Anne Rice/metrosexual vampire, he is a walking talking bloodsucking corpse that is the uncontested lord of a vast swath of a medieval kingdom. Through and through he is a black-hearted villain, nothing of an anti-hero. The story unfolds as Witzky defends his domain from local werewolves, mortal sorcerers and their demonic minions, and the machinations of other vampires, Romanian or otherwise. Falling somewhere between Van Helsing's phantasmagoria of iconic monsters and Hannibal Lechter's cult of personality, Witzky is able and willing to do all of those horrible things to people that deep down we would all like to do, no matter how much we deny it in public.

Okay, so I got no ending, but I've had a rough night at work and a couple of cold ones, so there!

Scras will be punished for Denise Crosby, it took foever to get an idea together for her.

Noble Caldia of Pathros

Hers is the family that has run the Pathros system for the Imperium since the Pacification Campaigns. Pathros system is a rich mining center bringng great wealth to her family who owns as well as administrates the system. Since no planetoid is habitable in the system, all the miners and civilians live in high colonies, orbital platforms of various types.

Though mining is the main concern, many zero G foundries and micro-g fabrications centers are found here. There is even a ship yard of note. If the mining ever plays out, the system will continue to proper.

The city of Pathros is a large orbital city around the fourth planet. A large segement of the core pod is the private domain of the Family Pathros. Here her family live as the grand nobles they truly are, in opulant luxury.

Always draped in cloth of gold and synthsilk, Caldia always looks and acts the part of a grand noble. She is always "on stage", never letting anyone see her in a moment of weakness or less than perfection. Even in her personal relations, in which there have been quite a few as she has great appeties, she lives a ritualized and formal life. Hers is a life that runs like clockwork based upon the world she has set up. When appropriate, she will be a concubine or possible wife for the Emperor. However given the swirling troubles of the Imperium, she may lose this honor.

In my Fantasy World Michael Dorn would play Ikawam, the Desert Scourge.

Ikawam's life as a youth was rough and full of danger. He grew up in a nomadic desert tribe, but was blessed with minor powers of telepathy and pyrokinesis, he once called down a bolt of Sun Fire to fry a Sand Panther to death. He saved his tribe from that Panther, and was regarded as a hero, for a while...

As he grew older, his powers developed. He could sense the jealousy surrounding his fame among the nomads. One night he decided to leave them all. Now he wanders the desert, cloaked in sand, and with a few Sand Pathers in tow. He will be seen on the horizon as a shadow upon a dune, then dissapear with a flash like steel in the sunlight.

Legends are told about him, and it is said that if you are lost he will appear. Either to put you out of your misery of lead you to safety, never speaking, never seen for more than a second...

I would like to see Mr. Buscemi play the Scourge. It's a role I think he would enjoy playing, as it is a complex role with struggling against society as the character's main theme. He also dies two-thirds of the way through his own story, which seems to be a recurring issue for Mr. Buscemi's roles.

I should note that this is not an NPC from my own campaign, but rather that of another GM. I did help develop the character however, and the Scourge has taken on near mythical proportions as an NPC. This character has shaped the game world, and I have co-opted him into my own campaign (as a background character of recent history) and into the game world as a larger whole. The Immersive Game World is cool like that.

The Scourge, a.k.a. Scirje, is both hero and villain, depending on context, and even his staunchest supporters would still often consider him a dangerous foe. This Highlander Orck is the son of an Orckish warlock and the grandson of a great Orckish warlord. He united the various squabbling tribes into a unified nation under his banner. He then set his sights on the more civilised lands overseas. Pirates, spies, riots, and curses rocked Midian under his guidance. A coalition of forces gathered against him, marking the first time in recorded history that anyone managed to get most of the nations of the world to cooperate on anything, even if it was by getting them to wage war against him.

Scirje's goal was simply to get respect for the Orcks & the lands of Osterre. He organised tiny warring bands of primitive barbarians into a solid nation that the entire world feared. He gave the Orcks pride. This was something almost unknown to them, and never before had there been a sense of greater destiny or collective identity among them. He wanted the world to know and fear the Orcks, and recognise their sovereignty of their lands. He wanted official recognition for the Orcks, instead of--at most--just a casual mention on a distant spot at the edge of the map.

When the world's forces finally fought their way to his doorstep, Scirje sued for peace. Instead of wanting to lead the new nation that he had founded, he wanted to retire in seclusion & private study in a remote part of the Byzant Empire. In fact, some of the chaos was a cover for him taking over the small spot in the Darkmouth Emirate he had chosen for retirement. Unfortunately for the great Scourge, he had planned a mystic ritual for passage to Suditerre, rather than the less grand (but much safer) exit. This ritual failed, leaving his mind a husk. Rather than allow his comatose body to fall into the hands of the invaders, his own people killed him & destroyed his remains.

The legacy of the Scourge lives on. The Orcks are still united, no longer as a single nation, but as two strong ones. The Orckish Highlands (Scirje's homeland) was conquered by combined Heldannic, Killian, and Greatsea forces. The culturally distinct Lowlander Orcks surrendered peacefully to marines of the Kingdom of Formour. There is talk of reconciliation, but differences between the two Orckish cultures is perhaps too great to do anything other than spark conflict. Many of the pirates of the Scourge were in open water or in hiding among uncharted islands, and escaped the losses on the battlefield that their land-bound brethren suffered. Their numbers are still strong, and they are even more of a threat now that they are no longer united under one ruler.

She's not exactly the most talented thespian in Hollywood, is she now?

Logged

“I'm yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Hollywood and Madison Avenue, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you're old and weak.” -Bill Watterson